1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to 3-D imaging identification and, more particularly, to a system and method for identifying an individual based on hand geometry and/or fingerprints and palm prints.
2. Description of Related Art
Generally, the more information which can be extracted from a hand, the more effective and useful the prints obtained will be for background checks, forensic investigations, security, etc. Also, fingerprint and palm print technology is becoming particularly necessary in airports and border patrols to prevent terrorism and other criminal activity. In all of these contexts, the prints captured are often compared with those in large databases. Thus, there is an escalating need for fast, accurate and complete fingerprint and palm print capturing to serve these purposes. However, the presently available touchless technology inefficiently requires fingerprints to be captured one at a time, and fails to capture the majority of the biometric information on the hand as a whole. Furthermore, the prior art capture devices introduce operator error or incorrect data capture. For example, because only one finger is scanned at a time, it may be the case that the wrong finger is inserted for scanning purposes, either unintentionally or deliberately. Therefore, the resultant captured fingerprint data may be incorrect with respect to the intended digital representation of a particular finger. Additionally, the prior art captures only the front and sides of the distal ends of the fingers and thumb. Information contained on the more proximal surfaces of the fingers, the tips of the fingers, and the palm is not captured by the prior art devices. The prior art devices are also limited due to speed, capture area, physical size, and rigid placement of hands.
Almost any characteristic of a person can be used as a biometric identifier, including the shape of a person's hand. Commercially available systems utilizing hand geometry require strict placement of hands against an outlined platen, a fixed arrangement of pegs, or other predefined hand positioning structure. For example, the HandKey II system by Recognition Systems requires a subject to place his or her hand on a lit table within rigid pegs. One camera images the back of the hand and another camera images the sides of the finger. The prior art system takes about 50-100 measurements using finger length, thickness, curvature, etc. A shortcoming of the prior art system is its requirement through usage of pegs to provide uniform placement of the hand. The system may fail to recognize the same hand unless the subject places fingers in the specific rigid formation outlined by the pegs. The system may also fail to recognize the same hand if the subject varies the amount of pressure that individual fingers exert against the pegs. Varying pressures applied by the same subject against the pegs often leads to radically different measurements and recognition errors.
There is a tenet in biometrics that more is better, meaning, that the more biometric information obtained from a person, the more unique the combination of observations will be and, therefore, there is more confidence in establishing the person's unique identity. Therefore, obtaining as much biometric hand data as possible is very useful for identification, recognition and authentication and, as such, there is a continual need for systems and methods which can capture and process all such information accurately and efficiently.